Review: Jabra Revo Wireless headphones I’ve tried a fair few wireless headphones over the past ten years, almost all of them unsatisfactory in one way or another. Many of the early ones were over-the-ear jobs with those round-the-back-of-your-head bands, but all suffered from either excessive weight - thanks to the on-board battery - or simply didn’t play for long. …
I have a pair of Technics DJ Headphones that cost £100 a decade ago that need a new cable (That you can actually get from a Technics/Panasonic authorised spare parts place.)
Best value for money headphones I have ever had.
(In ears usually break or get lost and I would say I definitely end up spending more than £10 a year average on them).
I was going to ask the same (though I'd have to take a soldering iron to a spare Sennheiser cable to really make it worth while)- what's the audio quality like with modern Bluetooth standards/dongles? I read somewhere that some protocols can just punt your source mp3 file to the 'phones, without transcoding to a different format on the way... An Idiot's Guide To wireless audio would be handy : D
"one real annoyance is the app’s inability to start a second track as a first one ends. Playing multi-track but continuous sound albums becomes less satsifactory when there’s a second or two gap between tracks. Say what you like about Apple’s iPod and iPhone, they have nonetheless long been able to play tracks without gaps. Get used to correct, gapless playback and it’s a real shock when you hear it again."
In what way is gapless playback "correct" ? Sure, it may be nice, but "correct" ?
Of course, they could improve this aspect of the app. Rather than make it playback without gaps, fill the gaps with a hissing sound, and add the odd snap, crackle and pop for that authentic rice krispies vinyl album experience.
Gapless becomes even more important if you are listening to classical music, especially opera, where "tracks" are used to identify sections in what is otherwise an unbroken piece of music.
Anyway, agree with the other comment that had price been at the top of the article I might also have lost interest before the end while I was searching for any indication on the lag the bluetooth connection introduces and whether this was low enough to make them usable for watching video
Has anyone got a BT headset that can be used in conversations either over google's talk or skype over Android? (Laptops seem to be way friendlier in this department).
It lately seems that everyone I speak to has the same issues and despite trying a bewildering variety of headsets between them, they have yet to pin down a BT headset that works with both.
As for headphones; frequent travel in my earlier years has damaged my ears enough to not be in a position to appreciate fine details beyond raw sound power and active noise cancellation. Besides, my budget just doesn't stretch to these levels.
For 200 moneys(1) I would expect the headphones to have active noise canceling.
Also: I don't know about any body else, but on-the-ear headphones get quite uncomfortable for me - give me in-the-ear or over the ear, not on-the ear.
(1) Since these are likely to follow the standard pattern of being US$200, or UK£200, or €200, depending upon where you are, so 200 moneys. 400 moneys for the poor folks in Australia.
£200? Over Bluetooth? Ahahaha wtf???
Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth to deliver cd quality, even apt-x doesn't.
why does anyone recommend or waste this much money???
it doesn't matter what funky app they provide... Unless it's wired you don't have the bandwidth. Then again mobile phone audio appears to have completely redefined what is considered decent audio :(
That is the advantage of the old Apple and Sony Ericsson connectors (That I know about at least) you bypass the phone / mp3 player dac. (Seems like lightning does something pointless to try and achieve the same thing).
Even more stupid is pulseaudio which is really poor locally might be tolerable if you could just set a phone or tablet really simply to output over wifi using it.
(Might still be not worth it but a minimal on demand type version of it perhaps I could tolerate.)
Can't speak for these, but I have a very nice pair of over the ear Sennheiser MM-500. They work perfectly well over Bluetooth when I'm out and about and don't want to carry around CDs or vinyl or MiniDisc or whatever.
The advantage is, when I'm at home or if I'm mixing a show, I plug in a cable, and I've still got my nice comfy headphones, but now, the sound quality is a little better
For me, that means I don't have to find a bluetooth set of comfy phones and a wired set of comfy phones - so instead of having to buy two pairs, I have one, and I didn't mind paying a little more than I would for a decent set of wired phones on their own. That said, I wouldn't have paid full price for the Sennys...
YMMV.
For that price they're squarely into the Sennheiser MM450-X territory - true, the Sennys are around the £275 mark, but if you're prepared to pay £200 for a set of cans, you're probably just as prepared to pay £275. I've got a set of the 450-X, and they are very very good at making the best of what is a particularly difficult job; MP3 playback over Bluetooth from the phone's media player.
Which is a point worth raising I think. The bitrate of the track, and the phone's own player are what really seem to be the critical factor in this instance. For example, the Sennys are faithful in their reproduction, so 96kbps MP3s don't sound very good at all. Similarly, the wooly playback of the Bold 9900 is worse than the Lumia 900.
I'm also unclear whether these Jabras have any of the following; active noise cancellation/suppression, play/ffwd/rrwd/volume controls on them, fold flat for briefcase. Without that, £200 is asking a lot when the Sennheiser range have all that and more.Not suggesting the MM450/550 is everyone's cup of tea, and as an audiophile I occasionally wince at how they reproduce sound, but on balance they cover all the bases extremely well.
Last point to raise, every phone I've paired my Sennys to has decided to treat them as a traditional BT headset, and thus disables any onboard EQ ability. Seems these only work with a wired connection. So if you like your bass boost, or concert hall settings, they may not be active on a BT headset.
>> It also lifts the mid-range and higher frequencies so they’re not muffled by the accentuated bass
So it turns up the bass, mid range, and higher frequencies, which means ... it's turned up the volume ?
But I agree with earlier comments. Sounds nice, I like the idea of Bluetooth + USB + analogue, but I don't like "on ear" headphones, and I don't have £200 spare :(
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